In one of the books on race awareness I read the author explained that at certain ages children cannot actually classify things as two things at once. For example, a block can be square or blue, but it is not a blue square, or your Mommy is Mommy or a Caucasian, not a Caucasian Mommy. One usually starts to grow past this inability around age 4 or 5. However, I realized recently that I was having the same issue.
It appears from my limited exposure that there are two camps of why one should adopt. These two camps appear to be on completely opposite sides of a huge cavern and never the twain shall meet. I spent the last two weeks of trying to decide which one I belong in because, honestly, I have problems with both.
One camp is the adoption in order to "rescue" a child from some not identified but not so positive fate; at minimum an orphan has no family, so providing it with a forever family is a form of rescue. Christians tend to lean towards a form of this, though it is more politely phrased as "Finding a Family for the Child not Finding Children for Families." God calls us to care for the orphan and reach out to those less fortunate.
The second camp is horrified by the "rescue mentality" as they call it, and therefore, apparently, believe one should adopt in order to add to your family and only for this reason. People praised Donna in "Wo Ai Ni, Mommy" for saying she adopted to fill a void in her heart (while criticizing every other aspect of her parenting).
As a Christian perhaps I should have just fallen into the "Rescue" camp and been done with it. It certainly would have made for a more contented last few weeks. However, while we are adopting because we felt led by God to do so, we never viewed it as rescuing a child. Because God called us to adopt we felt confident He would make it work, but we never thought about it as obeying His command to care for the orphan. I was astounded to discover there is a whole Christian movement to adopt and that some are taking it so far as to say Christians should adopt in order to provide children with "Christian" homes not just families. My adoption agency is even a part of this movement, so I shouldn't be surprised, but I was. This article explains this view point a little better if you are interested, and while the author says not every Christian should care through the orphan through adoption, he teaches every Christian should be advocating for said orphan. I confess I find this a difficult view to accept. I believe God gives us each passions about specific social injustices. Orphans and Widows are certainly top on the list according to the Bible, but Christians are also expending energy on fighting abortions, racism, helping the poor, and more. This adoption experience for me is not giving me a longing to bring home more and more orphans (okay maybe two) but a passion to help America overcome racism--something that I never felt I had the right to fight for before reading up on race to be a better parent to my trans-racially adopted daughter.
The other camp has even more reasons than I to be against this "rescue" mentality, some of which I find to be valid concerns. For instance, if one adopts in order to rescue a child, it has led to parental attitudes that the child should be grateful for his/her new life and put unintended pressure on said child to be perfect in return for his/her new home. I do not believe my Christian friends will actually raise their child to feel that way, but I can see how if there is too much emphasis on the rescue aspect of the adoption a child might internalize some unintended messages. You cannot read "Anne of Green Gables" or listen to some adult adoptees talk and believe this never happens. "How lucky you are!" is said to many adopted children (not by the parents one hopes)--bleh!
However, if we strip away altruistic motivation and the desire to give a child a loving family and better life than it would have otherwise had, we are left with the motivation to bring a child home to fill our need for a child. Well, how selfish is that? What right do we have to strip a child of her culture, language, and birth country in order to fill some self perceived need? If we tell our child we brought her home to be little sister for our 3 older kiddos is it not possible we will be giving her the unintentional message that her needs and feelings don't matter? What will she think when she starts to regret the lose of her birth culture and thinks we caused this pain so we could benefit from her being our daughter? Does this plan actually lead to more secure children?
Well, I read and read people's opinions, and whether they meant it or not, I thought I had to choose a camp to belong in. However, I was finding that very difficult since I didn't completely agree with either one. Then as I prayed about it God reminded me that things/ideas/blog posts often get more than one label. Why couldn't I be in both camps?
If I do not believe that I can offer an adopted child a better life and future than she is now facing, then I cannot adopt. Why cause a child trauma--to be removed from her birth country, all that is familiar, to go half way around the world before she even understands geography unless I believe having a forever family is a least a little improvement of growing up an orphan? Yes, I cannot say over and over "look what we rescued you from" and I need to carefully help her handle her trauma and loss, not down playing the pain in order to "look good," but I must believe I have something to offer. Adopting a child with the sole motivation of rescuing her is a bad, bad idea. There are many, many ways to help an orphan. The money it costs to adopt can sponsor a lot of fatherless children around the world. But "rescue" in some form is always part of adoption.
And yes, we are adopting a daughter from China in order to fill a void in our hearts. A void created 5 years ago. Even though we have since had a daughter via c-section, this void can only be filled with the child in China God intends for us to adopt. God led me to the decision to adopt over a 22 year period. If He has other plans now, it might be 22 years before I get the message.
So why will we adopt? For our mutual benefit.
2 comments:
I could have written this: "However, while we are adopting because we felt led by God to do so, we never viewed it as rescuing a child. Because God called us to adopt we felt confident He would make it work, but we never thought about it as obeying His command to care for the orphan. I was astounded to discover there is a whole Christian movement to adopt and that some are taking it so far as to say Christians should adopt in order to provide children with "Christian" homes not just families. My adoption agency is even a part of this movement, so I shouldn't be surprised, but I was."
Our agency also espoused this idea, but our motivation was not really to do that (provide a Christian home, even though that's exactly what we did--provide a Christian home). We felt led to adoption after the loss of a child through miscarriage. But I never ever saw this adoption as a "replacement" baby. I think it's more like God set this desire in our hearts and DH's work in Afghanistan with an orphanage set our hearts toward adoption of a child who might otherwise have gone without a family. I'm a stepmother and had no desire at all to parent a child from another mother. Not at all! Those kids of DH's first marriage totally killed that desire, lol. So this desire to adopt was totally from God.
Saw your message on Tonggu Momma' blog. :)
http://justmythoughtsexactly.wordpress.com/
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Wish I had seen this the week you wrote it! I understand exactly what you are getting at. And you are right - like so many things in this country, we can't focus on the polarized ends, but need to understand that it falls somewhere in the middle.
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